


Taking Apart

by simplecoffee



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/F, Post-Iron Man 1, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:07:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25875625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplecoffee/pseuds/simplecoffee
Summary: "No," Tony mumbles. "No, that's not all, Ms Potts. I want this to never be a 'that's all' situation again."
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 10
Kudos: 26
Collections: Rule 63 Exchange 2020





	Taking Apart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arcanawolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanawolf/gifts).



When she's in the lab, she puts her hair up. There's no lipstick, no contour, no knife-edge eyeliner. It's usually Pepper who paints it on her, precise and delicate like an artist, talking anxious patter about how Tony should let the professionals do it. Tony has no time for that, and after Afghanistan, less than none. In the past she's often had no time to take it off after the media circus decided it was done with her and tinkering couldn't wait, colours and textures melting into a horrifying mask underneath her workshop lights. She invented a cleansing gel at some point that solved that, so now she goes barefaced in the lab, slips off the killer heels and slips into flannel and gets down to it.

Macromolecules aren't even her strong suit; she's more of a physics girl. Wire and solder and metal and code are where she lives and breathes. She's even less into biological units larger than macromolecules, or, well, people - people are weird, all made of fluids and feelings, and Tony's too used to mopping up too much of both.

She constructs herself for the world. For Pepper, she disassembles herself. Slowly but surely, layer by layer, year after year. It's an iterative process, learning how. She doesn't have a scaffold, a diagram or equation for it, doesn't have a dozen schematics in her head for how to systematically take herself apart. The makeup was first, then her heart, when Pepper changed her arc reactor, held it in her hands, and something in Tony finally realized there was nobody else but her.

For Pepper, Tony puts her hair up. Lets herself close her eyes and no longer see the dripping cave walls that haunt her dreams, no longer see the jostling cameras that haunt her waking hours, no longer hear the numbers and patterns pounding at the insides of her head, aching for a way out through her hands. She'd clear a space right there on the worktop, eat Pepper out with Jarvis watching - fuck knows he's seen worse. She takes her upstairs, instead. Eats her out in the bed that's felt too big ever since she had it ordered, bigger still since she stopped trying to fill it with beautiful strangers who'd leave in the morning. Pepper is more gorgeous when she's under her tongue than she's ever been, controlled and precise until Tony wears her down, licks into her again and again until her hands fall limp in her hair. Sex is messy - fluids and feelings - but then, Tony's always loved to take things apart.

Pepper holds her close and fingers her slowly, and Tony lets herself be looked after for the first time in years. It figures that even here, now, Pepper would be taking care of her. 

"Promise me you'll be careful," Pepper says against her cheek. "Promise me, Tony. You already nearly kill yourself every damn day when you're not being some kind of vigilante hero."

There's the tiniest hint of grey at each of Pepper's temples; Tony counts the strands. She'll look at her own in the mirror tomorrow. "I'll be careful, Pep. I got something to come back to, right? Don't worry about it."

"You're infuriating," Pepper says, still loose and soft beside her. Tony knew sex was a good idea. "It's my job to make sure you don't kill yourself, remember?"

"Oh?" Tony says. "I thought it was your job to make sure I don't embarrass myself."

"Literally no one could do _that_ job," Pepper points out, and Tony turns her head and kisses her, lets Pepper reach up and take her hair down, run her fingers through it like no one ever has, precise and delicate like an artist. Like a scientist, even - though she'd be mortally offended if she knew Tony were thinking that.

"Will that be all, Ms Stark?" Pepper whispers when she smiles against her lips.

"No," Tony mumbles in return, a little bit hazy from the hair petting, and maybe from not having slept for a few days too, who even knows. "No, that's not all, Ms Potts. I want this to never be a 'that's all' situation again."

Tony saves the world a few more times in the next few years. The armour never starts to wear on her like her public face does - it's freeing, putting on the suit of her own creation, the suit of her own salvation, and blasting those who kill and maim in the face. Freeing to walk out of it - or fall out of it, depending on how well her suit-removal prototype works that day, she's working on improving it, it's an iterative process - and stumble down to the workshop or over to Pepper, all sweat and grease and everything real. Shower off the grime, go back to inventing, getting the numbers out of her head, or tame her hands some other way. Sometimes several other ways.

Tony's too used to quick and dirty, too used to people using her body, just like the press but in private - too used to people getting close for her money, or her name, or to try and take her down. Pepper makes her take it slow. Once Pepper knows she's going to stay, she eases her open, kisses her slowly, drives her wild every time. In the workshop, in the bedroom, in the Rolls-Royce Phantom out in the sunshine. Tony's faintly surprised, and she knows Pepper is too - knows Rhodey is, even - that she feels less volatile now, less like a ticking timebomb of self-destruction poised to take herself and the company under. Hell, she's even started to think of what's _best_ for the company - probably having Pepper take over as CEO, sooner than later, while she heads R&D and lets the numbers drive her, like they always have. 

Meanwhile, Tony lets Pepper construct her for the world, and at the end of the day, she lets Pepper take her apart. That, at least, is just as easy in a Tom Ford suit as the one she made, just as easy in flannel as in nothing at all. Some days Tony carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, and some days Pepper lifts her in her arms and kisses her till she forgets, and rain or shine, she's always, always there in the morning.


End file.
